Currently, optical supercontinuum pulses are used in optical communications, photoelectronic measurements, biophotonics, and a variety of other applications. Due to recent advances in optical fiber technology, mode-locked fiber lasers and semiconductor lasers that have high repetition frequencies in the gigahertz range or above and a central wavelength of 1550 nm can generate supercontinuum light having a peak optical power of several watts (see Non-Patent Document 1). The invention of photonic crystal fiber has made it possible to generate supercontinuum light having moderate peak optical power in an input light wavelength range of 1 μm or less (see Non-Patent Document 2).
Mode-locked titanium-sapphire lasers are used in basic research on supercontinuum light generation. However, a small-scale, low-cost light-pulse source is desired for practical applications.
[Non-Patent Document 1]
T. Morioka et al., “Transform-limited, femtosecond WDM pulse generation by spectral filtering of gigahertz supercontinuum”, Electron. Lett. 30,pp 1166-1167 (1994)
[Non-Patent Document 2]
J. Hermann et al., “Experimental evidence for supercontinuum generation by fission of higher-order solitons in phonic fibers”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 1739001 (2002)